Ultimate Spider-Man Episode Seventy-Seven: Contest of Champions, Part Three

Contest of Champions, Part Three

First Aired: October 17th, 2015

Synopsis: Spider-Man talks to the Collector who isn't pleased at all the heroes he's lost. Collector reveals that Grandmaster is the one holding the New Yorkers hostage, not him. It's then time for the next match which pits Spider-Man, Iron Spider, Venom, and Thor against Annihilus, Attuma, and Terrax. Spider-Man is the first to meet the villains but he manages to get away and meet up with his team. While they distract the villains he runs off to SHIELD Academy where he retrieves some robots. When he rejoins his team he reveals that they're Life Model Decoys, which disguise themselves as himself, Iron Spider, and Venom and fight alongside Thor while the real heroes escape. They use a SHIELD jet to break through the force field surrounding New York and reach the Grandmaster's ship, successfully destroying its communications array. They get on board the Grandmaster's ship afterwards so that they can free the New Yorkers from the Grandmaster, thus removing the stakes from the game. Meanwhile, on Earth, the LMD Iron Spider and Venom are defeated, leading to the Collector summoning A-Bomb, Hawkeye, and She-Hulk in response, saying that they'll make it a winners take all match.

 

Spider-Man and his allies find civilians in stasis alongside MODOK and the Leader, who can communicate even while in stasis due to their minds. Spider-Man makes a deal with them to free them in exchange for their help in evacuating the civilians of New York. The Grandmaster then teleports in, having discovered Spider-Man's deception, and fights Spider-Man and his allies while MODOK and Leader start freeing people, teleporting them back to Earth. MODOK and the Leader teleport back to Earth themselves, and Spider-Man remotely activates a self-destruct on the Grandmaster's ship. A few civilians still haven't escaped and Spider-Man works to free them, finding that one of them is Aunt May. To his surprise he discovers that she knows his identity and won't leave without him, but he convinces her he has to be there. Venom and Iron Spider overhear her and are shocked, but have to fight the Grandmaster until everyone evacuates. They teleport away too, but the Grandmaster follows them and reveals that while they were on his ship the remaining heroes lost to the villains, meaning that the game is over and New York is his.

 

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Last episode, I commented that the stakes for Grandmaster winning had changed from the villains running the Earth to the villains ruling over New York. This episode starts off saying that if Grandmaster wins the villains will run the Earth, going back to the stakes of the first episode, but then at the end when the Grandmaster wins, we see him starting to levitate all of New York (or rather, Manhattan), then declaring that "Your city belongs to the Grandmaster!" Make up your damn minds, writers!
• When Spider-Man's allies meet MODOK and the Leader, Spider-Man describes them to Amadeus as being the sixth and fifth smartest people in the world, as opposed to Amadeus being the seventh. I don't think this is the case in the comics, but I like it.
  

Review: While I still stand by my statement that the first episode of this arc is the strongest, this one does provide a nice way to break up the formula. Spider-Man choosing to subvert the rules of the game and eliminate a reason for them to be run is brilliantly sneaky, and the use of the LMDs to cover for him and his allies is a good use of using something that's been set up in the show before, namely that LMDs can use holograms to effectively become someone. The whole thing helps make Spider-Man more proactive rather than just reactive, and the twist that it's all for nothing since the Grandmaster won the game while he and his allies were freeing the civilians is a good twist and lead-in to the finale.

There's just one problem, and that's that a lot of Spider-Man and his allies' mission is kind of boring. They fly around in a jet and shoot some lasers at the Grandmaster's ship, they have a boring alliance with MODOK and the Leader that doesn't really bring anything interesting to the table, and then they have some boring fights with the Grandmaster. The concept of what they're doing is great, it's just that the execution needs to be polished a bit. I'm also a bit baffled at what the deal is with the Collector losing - the Grandmaster lost three matches already; did the Collector somehow think that it was worth staking the rest of the games on this one match?

In spite of those flaws though, there was one thing I did really like about this episode, and that was Aunt May revealing that she knows Peter's identity. I don't want to get my hopes up too much and expect too much to come of this, given how the show's missed some great potential in the past, but for now it's a great move and something that I hope really contributes to the last season. This series has really focused more on the Spider-Man side of the character rather than the Peter side, and it would be nice to change the focus a bit if possible.